Tickets are $35 for general public (18+) through November 30, and $40 thereafter and are available at www.ticketmaster.com or 212-307-7171.

If you want a sneak peek at the global musicians likely to tour North America in the next few years, there is one must-see music festival: globalFEST 2009.

For the sixth year, this leading showcase for international sounds keeps a foot in the door of cultural exchange, giving dozens of musicians access to the national stage. The event takes place on January 11, 2009 (7 pm) on three stages at the newly remodeled Webster Hall in New York City. With just one ticket, festival-goers can see twelve acts in one night, representing diverse global styles, from groundbreaking hybrids to little-known traditions, and in three unique settings under the same roof. WNYC, media sponsor of globalFEST, will be webcasting live from all three stages on www.wnyc.org.

globalFEST is timed to coincide with the annual Association for Performing Arts Presenters conference, when thousands of concert presenters are in town to program their upcoming seasons. While globalFEST was created in the wake of 9/11, a time of xenophobic backlash and tightening visa restrictions, the festival has always kept a finger on the pulse of cross-border musical exchange and has adapted to the changing needs of the field. The festival directors—Bill Bragin of Acidophilus: Live & Active Cultures and Isabel Soffer of World Music Institute, are joined by Shanta Thake of Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater.

U.S. policies continue to create challenges for touring musicians from abroad, but shrinking arts budgets and rising travel costs are also weighing heavily on many presenters’ minds. Co-producer Isabel Soffer explains: "The groups we have chosen this year reflect the climate we believe arts presenters, artists, agents, and audiences will be experiencing in the near future. We have taken into consideration groups that we feel will succeed artistically and economically in a variety of venue types, keeping in mind ticket sales, originality, and ease of touring. We have included five North American-based groups, smaller ensembles and some major draws, as well as groups completely new to the market that we think will create a big impact."

What the festival is really known for is the new opportunities it creates for touring musicians. “World music” continues to transform from folkloric niche to pop phenomenon. “International sounds are permeating unexpected places,” says globalFEST co-director Bill Bragin, whose day job is Director of Public Programming at Lincoln Center. “When you look at some of the large, general market rock festivals like Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Coachella, world music is starting to make its way into the lineups. It’s popping up more and more in commercials and soundtracks, and in major concert halls.” The once unthinkable—that an mbalax band (and globalFEST alum, Fallou Dieng) would open at the Hollywood Bowl for Gnarls Barkley or that an Inuit singer (and upcoming globalFEST artist Tanya Taqaq) would collaborate with Bjork—has become the highly anticipated, thanks to the iPod, the Internet, and ever-expanding opportunities for audiences to hear global music live.

globalFEST has played a significant role in stoking this world music revolution, presenting over 60 artists in its first 5 editions. Veterans of the festival have included Mariza, who made her way onto the stages of Carnegie Hall and the Late Show with David Letterman; Balkan Beat Box and Dengue Fever, which broke out of the underground to major festivals; and Nation Beat, which recently collaborated with Willie Nelson at his Farm Aid festival. Lo Còr de la Plana and Little Cow—both from globalFEST 2008— were able to use their appearance to secure US agents and subsequently conduct major national tours this year.

Major tours and visibility for a new kind of world music have sparked an array of musical hybrids and a plethora of collaborations where musicians spanning the globe share the stage. This border-crossing creativity does more than entertain; it educates and closes the gap between countries and cultures. “In times of economic turmoil, like we find ourselves in today, often the impulse is to cut back on exposure and funding for artists from abroad. However, we see all too clearly how our governments depend on one another for stability,” globalFEST co-director Shanta Thake reflects. “globalFEST creates an opportunity to offer a cultural parallel where we can build a dialogue through music and begin to break down barriers of fear and ignorance.”

Tough times make global connections and cultural exchange all the more crucial, a fact recognized by everyone from president-elect Barack Obama to arts presenters in Cedar Rapids. International players, such as globalFEST founding sponsor, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, also see the value in connecting across borders, and in supporting globalFEST for six consecutive years. “globalFEST is one of the most important world music events in the U.S. today and the perfect showcase for French and Francophone musicians’ creative energy,” explains Emmanuel Morlet, Musical Attaché at the French Embassy. “We continue to make globalFEST a priority, even in lean times, in hopes of sharing the multicultural musical heritages of France and beyond with North Americans and, more importantly, furthering our mutual understanding and education as global citizens.”

This year’s globalFEST roster opens up this conversation by introducing audiences to established artists they have not heard before, striking yet unheralded traditions, wild young innovators playing with centuries-old forms, and funky global revivalists of 1970s musical activism.

Many international artists who are the musical toast of their communities remain virtually unknown to the broader U.S. audience. Kailash Kher, a sensation in the Bollywood film world with his Sufi inflected popular songs, a judge of “Indian Idol,” and a household name on the Subcontinent, will finally blast onto the American scene, with his band Kailasa in tow. Though most everyone knows calypso, few Americans outside Caribbean communities know Calypso Rose, the grand dame of calypso, who has spent decades writing over 800 songs from fun-loving party numbers usually associated with Carnival, to politically and socially conscious anthems.

Along with unheralded international icons, globalFEST has always made a commitment to bringing lesser-known genres to U.S. stages too. Paris-based Shanbehzadeh and his son dive deep into the trance-like vocals and compelling rhythms of Boushehr in Southern Iran, a neglected corner of the Middle East, where Persian, African, and Indian sounds have merged for 500 years. Shanbehzadeh’s roots go back to the East African island of Zanzibar; his hip-swinging dances, unique bagpipe, striking double flute, and stirring percussion reveal an unexpected side of Iranian music, one steeped in traditions from around the Persian Gulf.

Tradition is never static, and globalFEST has launched numerous young innovators into the limelight. This year’s lineup highlights North America’s vibrant roots scene from the far north of the Arctic Nunavut to the sultry south of New Orleans. Canadian First Nations vocalist Tanya Tagaq taught herself Inuit throat games out of homesickness as a young woman, but went on to take tradition in a radical new direction, collaborating with artists as diverse as the Kronos Quartet and Bjork. The young musicians—all under 25—of Hot 8 Brass Band started off playing their mix of hip hop, R&B, and traditional jazz on the mean streets of New Orleans, where several members died due to gun violence, until Hurricane Katrina and Spike Lee launched the group into the national spotlight with an appearance in Lee’s film When the Levees Broke. The Occidental Brothers Dance Band International reflect the Windy City’s musical past and cosmopolitan present in their NYC debut, bringing a blend of Ghanaian highlife and Congolese rumba with the avant-garde jazz, house, and indie rock vibes that have put Chicago on the musical map.

Europe is also bursting with new takes on old sounds. France’s L&O, led by violinist Oliver Slabiak of klezmorim Les Yeux Noirs, (a standout group in globalFEST’s inaugural edition), will make the US debut of a new project with his operatically trained vocalist wife Laure, bringing their swinging and cosmopolitan update of French chanson. In the mestizo spirit of their compatriots Manu Chao and Ojos de Brujo, La Troba Kung-Fú stays true to the Catalan roots of one of Spain’s most popular musical exports, the infectious flamenco-inflected rumba catalana, while gleefully adding elements from cumbia to salsa to dub. Fronted by a be-dreadlocked Algerian Jewish singer born in Marseille, the tribal electronica of Watcha Clan turns the Mediterranean Basin into one big rave, uniting Balkan and Berber beats, four languages, and one mean sampler.

While some emerging musicians find inspiration in older forms, other young, hip artists are rediscovering the brash and bold sounds of the global seventies. More than a stylistic pose, this vintage vamp reengages with that decade’s themes of struggle and rebellion while keeping it distinctly funky. Femi Kuti, son of the iconic Fela Anikulapo Kuti, keeps Afrobeat alive with his band The Positive Force by incorporating the club sounds of today with the politically involved ethos of yesteryear; Femi is committed to combating AIDS and other vital causes. Performing for the first time outside of Brazil, Rio’s Marcio Local extends the legacies of influences like Jorge Ben and Banda Black Rio, standing at the crossroads of two great traditions in modern Brazilian music, Afro-Brazilian samba and’70’s soul, to create an undeniably cool and funky ode to political change and carioca life. Led by Olivier Conan, French émigré and owner of the influential nightclub Barbes, New York’s Chicha Libre keeps the spirit of Amazonian psychedelic surf-cumbia alive, playing Peruvian gems alongside funky originals in the era’s care-free, syncretic style.

Drawing on the bounty of sounds, styles, and approaches exploding around the world, globalFEST has opened minds and doors for outstanding international artists and contributed to this goal. “What we've done is successfully demonstrated the full range of styles that fall under this rubric of ‘world music,’” Bragin notes. “We helped open up the definitions of the genre, and helped presenters and artists come together to discover exciting new booking horizons, all the while bringing music fans in New York City one of the annual concert highlights of the year."

globalFEST is a volunteer-run co-production of World Music Institute, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, and Acidophilus: Live & Active Cultures. Support for all six editions has been provided by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy with additional support from the French Music Export Office, recognizing France’s pre-eminent role as a hotbed of global music activity. globalFEST media sponsor is WNYC Radio. globalFEST is presented in association with Bowery Presents.

Visa services are provided courtesy of Tamizdat. La Troba Kung-Fú’s performance is supported by the Institut Ramon Llull. Tanya Tagaq will appear at globalFEST thanks to support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Foundation for Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR). Tickets cost $40 for general admission, with a special early-bird price of $35 for general public (18+) through November 30, and are available online at www.ticketmaster.com, or via telephone at 212-307-7171.

Tickets can be purchased with no service charges, cash only, at the Mercury Lounge 217 East Houston Street, Manhattan, Mondays – Saturdays, 12 noon – 7pm. For additional information, contact the World Music Institute box office at 212-545-7536. The artist line up is subject to change.

This is the story of how serendipity—in the form of a flakey accordionist, a flattened violin, and a ninja luthier—helped two musicians taken with the sounds of the Eastern Mediterranean find their voices. The duo, known as Teslim, extracts resonant song from a menagerie of instruments and orphan violins. Classically-trained violinist and Jewish music innovator Kaila Flexer and self-taught musician and carpenter Gari Hegedus bring a new vibrancy to Sephardic and original music, utilizing the modes and unique time signatures that echo throughout the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey on their new self-titled album.

The two musicians hailed from radically different worlds: Flexer had explored classical, Celtic, and klezmer before turning passionately to Balkan and Sephardic music, while Hegedus—whose last name fatefully means “fiddler” in Hungarian—discovered his great love for music as a young man experimenting with various instruments, learning to play them by ear from recordings or simply by tinkering. Both had struggled with musically fallow periods.

Their journeys intersected in San Francisco, when an accordion player canceled on a gig and Flexer asked Gari to step in as a last-minute replacement. The result has been an ongoing, intensive collaboration to bring out their true voices, as well as the voices of the stray instruments they take in.

“Gari saved my musical life,” Flexer reflects. "I had played music all my life, and had been composing for a good fifteen years, but listening to Gari play and experiencing his profound ability to listen to himself and to me, was a revelation. It was suddenly not about conquering the instrument or compositional cleverness. What mattered was listening on a very deep level and playing with a transparency of heart that is very hard to teach, but you sure know it when you hear it. Having a witness is a very powerful thing—it has changed my playing, my composing, my teaching, and my experience of music completely.”

One source of inspiration for Teslim’s compositions and soulful renditions of traditional Sephardic tunes is the instruments Hegedus has restored, collected, modified, and brought to life. These special instruments take what was once vocal music into whole new territory. “Stone’s Throw” features not only the Swedish nykelharpa, thanks to Olov Johansson of Väsen, but also a 200-year-old violin with a checkered past. “Johnny Cunningham, the well-known Scottish fiddler was at a party, put his fiddle on the couch, and went to get another beer. When he came back, he sat on it, and it was decimated. He had to put the whole thing in a bag,” Flexer recounts.

Cunningham brought this sack of shattered violin bits into Hegedus’s instrument shop, where the fiddle sat for a decade. “After I sold the shop, my friend and fellow instrument maker Ken White found it in the back, pulled it out, and decided to fix it up,” Hegedus explains. “But it still did not sound right, so I had it for years in my closet.” White had to take the violin apart and reassemble it three times, but it finally came to life, especially when tuned low, as violins once were when the instrument had originally been built over two centuries ago.

To make instruments like Cunningham’s crushed fiddle speak, Hegedus may intuitively carve a new bridge, or add a resonating drone string or a sound post. Meanwhile Flexer finds new violin tunings that bring out fresh sides of old instruments. “When you take an instrument you’ve played your whole life and tune it differently, your instincts don’t work. You find new things,” Flexer smiles. “You go for one thing, and it ends up taking you somewhere completely unexpected. It’s like a little stairway suddenly appears in a familiar hallway and you if you follow it, you can go to some amazing new places.”

Other instruments—a family of Turkish sazes, a viola rescued from the dumpster—invoke their own novel tunings, timbres, and starting points for improvisation, their own brands of serendipity. Though sometimes instruments seem to take on minds of their own, like at a recent Teslim performance when the duo launched into “For A 5/Karsilamás for Sara.” “Gari plays a pennywhistle on this song, and something had gotten stuck on the G hole. Gari tried to avoid that note, but the piece is in G,” Flexer chuckles, “which meant we really had to fly by the seat of our pants.”

At the heart of much of Teslim’s musical exploration lies maqam, the Turkish musical system that includes microtonal intervals falling between the notes in standard Western scales. Maqam, for Flexer and Hedegus, is a whole new palette of possibilities, compelling shades between the primary colors. "Beethoven did amazing things with our twelve notes, but think what he could have done if he would have had maqam!" Flexer laughs. “The shades of sound add melancholy, grit, mischief, and a whole range of emotion.

While Teslim brings instruments to life, the duo also translates friendships into song. The evening before Hegedus underwent successful surgery to correct a hearing problem, his friend's four-year-old daughter Camila insisted she had something to tell him and unknowingly whispered a blessing into his troubled ear, inspiring “Camila’s Song.” Needless to say, Hegedus’ hearing returned.

“Timarxou Street Dojo” is a tribute to Hegedus’ Greek luthier friend and aspiring ninja, who shares both his passion for instrument building and traditional Japanese culture. “I just got an oud from him in April that is amazing. He inlayed this samurai crest on the pick guard, out of ivory, a way of sharing our love of old Japanese craftsmanship,” Hegedus laughs. “There is a certain magic to all of it--that’s what keeps me hooked. It’s hard to define and pin it down in concrete terms.”

Flexer agrees: “As our name implies, you can’t surrender until you commit and vice versa. There is so much respect and trust between us that musically, anything can happen. Mainly, we try to stay open to mystery and let it happen.”

“The twin stringed chemistry and virtuosic interplay is extraordinary as Kaila and Gari forge a fresh musical idiom inspired by the cross-pollinating currents of Turkish, Sephardic, and Cretan/Greek music,” says Dore Stein, host of Tangents Radio on KALW, San Francisco. “Imagine musical siblings separated at birth, and by luck and magic reunite in each other's inner voice.”

World Music News WireAfrofunk band Chopteeth came from an unexpected place. Labor organizer and guitarist Robert Fox was mourning the sudden, heartbreaking death of a close friend in a car accident. “It was a terrible, terrible thing,” remembers Fox. “I came back from this and thought, ‘Wow, that could have been me!’ It made me assess what’s important in life.” After some soul searching, Fox realized that beyond family and his work in the labor movement, there was another passion that he could no longer deny. He was seized with the crazy idea of forming and playing bass in a band that rocked like Fela Kuti in the 1970s, when the Nigerian superstar was weaving James Brown’s high-energy funk and his own Yoruba musical tradition into pure Afrobeat gold.

The labor organizer got to work. His first recruit was guitarist and songwriter Michael Shereikis, a Peace Corp returnee who cut his musical teeth in a remote, politically fraught corner of the Central African Republic and on the stages of Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire. Now musical director of Chopteeth, Shereikis has absorbed the pulse of African rhythms in his bones, sometimes transforming into a one-man syncopated band during rehearsals. “He’ll simultaneously play the guitar line, keep time with cymbal and bass drum on either foot, and sing vocal and horn lines while the band works out a new arrangement,” says Fox. “Some people have perfect pitch. Michael has perfect rhythm.”
Gradually the current crew of stellar Chopteeth musicians came into the fold through word of mouth and well-placed ads in the local weekly. It is an eclectic group to be sure, with an age range spanning decades, three strong women to keep the men honest, and backgrounds from the American south to Romania, Kenya, and parts in between. Shereikis laughs: “If you plucked this group of people out of a hat and wanted to bet we were going to create a successful Afrofunk band, I suspect you’d get a lot of takers.” But you might make a lot of money too, because somehow all of the players’ diverse experiences--along with a heavy dose of mutual respect--come together and make it work.

The members of Chopteeth—a name that comes from Fela’s song, ”Jehin, Jehin,” meaning “crazy fool” in Yoruba—began by cramming into small practice spaces to learn the inner workings of Fela’s hypnotic groove. As the band stepped onto local stages, their audiences quickly grew and the reaction steadily intensified. In addition to classic Afrobeat, and with the help of some crate-digging, the band soon branched into a more pan-African repertoire, including classics from Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, and beyond, always keeping to that 1970s horn and guitar sound.

The vintage gems from Ghana, Kenya, and elsewhere endeared the mostly non-African group to a variety of émigré fans, from the Nigerian businessman who gave Chopteeth their first gig and introduced them to their Kenyan singer Anna Mwalagho, to the Ghanaian listeners flabbergasted by the band’s true-sounding covers of old favorites. One fan from Ghana was absolutely convinced that the blond-haired Shereikis hailed from her homeland. “She came up to him and asked what part of Ghana he was from,” Fox chuckles. “When Michael said he was from Illinois, she wouldn’t buy it because his accent in Twi was too good. She just thought he was messing with her.”

In describing the musical spirit of Chopteeth, Shereikis evokes the humid dance clubs where he first fell hard for African music: “My moment of first falling in love with this music came in the sweaty clubs of Central Africa. Going and having a few beers. A packed dance floor, with everyone grooving to the beat.” This atmosphere returns at Chopteeth’s live shows: “From the start we’ve played gigs at even the smallest clubs in DC. We’d spill off the stage and into crowd,” Fox smiles. “We’ll play anywhere.”

Chopteeth began crafting its own unique brand of songs that gleefully draw on everything from salsa to soukous to Balkan-style time signatures. On their debut CD, “Chopteeth,” this eclectic approach to composition takes the band from upbeat Swahili lyrics over a South African pulse one second (“Upendo”), to spaghetti Western-inspired instrumentals the next (“Herky Jerk”). True to the political essence at the heart of Fela’s music, the band incorporates socially conscious lyrics into several Afrobeat-inspired tunes (“Struggle,” “Weigh your Blessings,” “Dog Days”) and into a raucous collaboration with DC rapper Head-Roc (“No Condition is Permanent”), reminiscent of the Red Hot and Riot Fela tribute compilation which turned a new generation onto Afrobeat. In this same activist spirit, the band makes a point of playing in support of groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Save Darfur Coalition, as well as at rallies for striking stadium workers in Baltimore, or parties thrown by the tongue-in-cheek Billionaires for Bush.

The Chopteeth movement reaches into the blogosphere as well, with The Afrofunk Forum, where band members run one of the few USA-based websites dedicated to Afrobeat and related genres. The site has attracted visitors from over 152 countries.

Restlessly searching for a new musical angle, Chopteeth invites collaboration with local and touring African musicians, like Sierra Leone’s Refugee Allstars who popped into the studio for “Weigh Your Blessings.” Shereikis sees the Chopteeth circle expanding ever further, becoming a frame of sorts for a much bigger picture, in which DC-area African musicians have the space and time to make art on their own terms. “In Africa, people get together every day,” Shereikis explains. “There’s no paying for practice space or having to commute somewhere to play together. You buy some food, play all night, and that’s how you get to be an awesome musician in a great band.” In their new homes in America’s cities, African musicians often struggle to find places to rehearse and play, all while juggling several jobs. Chopteeth is working to change the game.

One good example of this collaborative spirit is in the bond forged with DC-area Malian griot and 2007 Grammy nominee, Cheick Hamala Diabate. Diabate was struggling to find a recording studio and engineer with whom he felt comfortable enough to entrust his next CD project. After performing together several times at Chopteeth shows, Shereikis stepped in and is currently producing Diabate’s next album, featuring many of Chopteeth’s musicians. In exchange, Diabate recorded “Wili Nineh” with the band, based on an old initiation song, calling for recognition of Chopteeth’s contribution to the scene. The song calls out the band’s name and band members, saying “These people may not have a father or mother. Nobody has spoken for them. But now they are of an age.” “It was basically a nice way for him to say that Chopteeth may be a bunch of Americans, but they’re playing this music respectfully and even moving it forward, so listen to them,” Shereikis reflects.

By serving the musicians who inspire them—paying royalties and supporting African émigré projects—Chopteeth is about more than playing Fela. The band is about building a community, even if it’s just for a few hours on a packed dance floor. “Sometimes when people first hear us live they have this furrowed look on their brow, as if they’re wondering, ‘What the hell?’ Then there’s this tipping point,” Fox smiles. “You get halfway through the third song and suddenly, one person gets up, and then in a flash everyone in the room is moving to the same beat.”

A young woman, scaling the Himalayas on foot, flees the Chinese work camp where she was born, her tiny son in tow. A boy, forced to fight in Sudan’s bloody civil war at age six, winds up in a refugee camp where he regains his dignity, but not his childhood. An outspoken singer is compelled to leave Zimbabwe in the wake of police intimidation at her concerts and a pervasive atmosphere of political and economic repression.

These are some of the real-life stories of the artists who created The Price of Silence, a collaborative project marking the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and produced by Link TV: Television Without Borders.

The song, based on the Grammy-winning Colombian group Aterciopelados’ “Canción Protesta,” is produced by Andres Levin, co-founder of Music Has No Enemies. A special EP featuring the full track along with a radio edit, a Spanish version and the original “Canción Protesta” song is available for $1.99 exclusively at iTunes starting today, Dec. 9. Net proceeds will benefit Amnesty International.

The video, directed by Joshua Atesh Litle and set in the United Nations General Assembly, is an urgent plea to renew the commitment to human rights everywhere. It will premiere nationally on Link TV and will air regularly on the channel starting Tuesday, Dec. 9 at 9:45 p.m. ET/6:45 p.m. PT (available on DIRECTV channel 375, DISH Network channel 9410 and select urban cable systems). Link TV will also stream the video in its entirety at www.LinkTV.org. Amnesty International USA will stream the video at www.ProtectTheHuman.org.

“Sixty years after the original signing, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has proven to be a true agent of change, helping lay the groundwork for rights-based movements worldwide,” said Larry Cox, executive director for Amnesty International USA. “Still, each day throughout the world there are countless instances in which basic rights are being denied. Our only chance to turn the tide is by raising our voices in unison, then taking decisive action. Amnesty International has proven that grassroots activism works. Through this video, we call on citizens of the world to rededicate themselves to bring justice to all.”

Even more compelling than the list of musicians who donated their talents to the project is the silent list of those who wanted to participate. “We contacted artists who had the will, but ultimately couldn’t get involved because they or their families would have been in danger,” explains Steven Lawrence, vice president for music and cultural programming for Link TV, who developed and produced the video. “In one case, we couldn’t even directly mention the project in our emails to a certain Central Asian musician because of government surveillance. We had to communicate in code.”

The first person to record for the project was Emmanuel Jal, Sudanese rapper and former child soldier, who recorded the day after he spoke to the U.N.General Assembly about his brutal, lost childhood. His personal plea set the standard for everything that followed. While artists like Jal, Angelique Kidjo, Natalie Merchant, Aterciopelados, and Stephen Marley (second son of Bob) address human rights straight up, many of the other artists express themselves through their own languages and traditions.

Tibetan exile Yungchen Lhamo sings a Buddhist prayer for peace. Zimbabwean singer Chiwoniso shouts out for freedom in Shona. Rachid Taha and Kiran Ahluwalia are interwoven, singing respectively in Arabic and Urdu, followed later by Natacha Atlas who adds her arching Arabic melisma to the track. Yerba Buena brought a joyful Yoruban chant to the mix. And Andrea Echeverri of Aterciopelados wrote a Spanish chorus and two verses, which she delivers along with Julieta Venegas.

Jal is not the only MC on The Price of Silence. Hugh Masekela, the South African jazz icon, who was an exile from his homeland for many years during apartheid, contributes a rap-like chant filmed on a roof in Johannesburg. And American hip-hop artist Chali 2na adds his own penetrating bass voice, urging the U.N. delegates to “Jump up” and “end the killing and the genocide.” The Price of Silence is about more than identifying the wrongs; it’s about the strength of the human spirit to sing out and right them.

Though the artists address difficult and painful subjects, a positive, life-affirming quality radiates through their performances, as the video turns the U.N. General Assembly hall into a dance party for global human rights. Moved by the musicians’ message, the U.N. delegates in the video first listen then are gradually overtaken by the energy and message of the song until they are dancing and singing along.

The video will be launched online and at events worldwide beginning the first week in December, including at a meeting of The Elders in Paris on Dec. 6 to celebrate the “Every Human Has Rights” campaign with Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan, former President Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson, and other world leaders.

Hambone. Gumboot. Palmas. Kecak. From the tundra to the tropics, people can’t resist the urge to snap, clap, step, slap, holler, and sing artful music. This universal resonator—our bodies—and its myriad global sounds will ignite audiences at the First International Body Music Festival in San Francisco and Oakland (December 2-7, 2008), featuring body musicians performing traditional and contemporary pieces from the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Canada’s Arctic, and other popping, stomping, humming corners of the world. Ticket information is available at www.crosspulse.com. Along with presenting world-premiere pieces and USA debuts, the Festival will reach out to educators and young people via workshops; to families with a kid-friendly matinee; and to aspiring body musicians with what might just be the world’s first body music open mic.

Body music pioneer and Festival director Keith Terry’s vision of a global musical shindig goes beyond trading rhythms or belly-slap techniques. It’s about a cross-cultural conversation touching that visceral place that only the world’s oldest instrument can reach, as Terry was reminded recently while directing a workshop. "I was teaching a rhythm that involved touching the chest and then snapping, stepping, and singing. I wasn't looking at the class; I was just listening," says the 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, the first to earn such an award in body music. "It was beautiful so I let it go on for a while and when I turned around I saw most of the room in tears. There was something about the act of touching the chest that moved everyone. It was about the heart.”

Until recently, body music’s global adventure in deep connections and corporeal rhythm was unfolding independently across the globe, its pop culture presence ebbing and waning as interest in hambone or Stomp came and went. Then came YouTube.

Terry was surfing for body music videos on the Internet when he came across the eye-opening work of a São Paulo ensemble called Barbatuques. “We were on parallel paths, but with obviously different end results,” Terry explains. Eager to find out more, Terry got in touch with director Fernando Barba, one of Brazil’s body music trailblazers, only to discover that Barba had just been planning to shoot Terry an email himself. This “blind connection,” as Terry calls it, was the beginning of a great online friendship.

Barba and Terry’s virtual connection lies at the heart of the Festival, in the form of a long-awaited, world-debut collaboration between the two body musicians’ groups—Slammin All Body Band and Barbatuques. Oakland-based Slammin brings together globally inspired beatboxing and Terry’s masterful, graceful body music with four soul-stirring vocalists. Barbatuques has been developing their unique “circle orchestra” of twelve musicians who rock out stunning versions of samba and maracatu classics by moving and vocalizing. Rather than focusing on body rhythms or vocals, the two groups use both. Although the two are from radically different cultural perspectives, they both emphasize groove and there are unexplainable parallels in the ways that they transpose instrumental music onto their bodies.

Yet the ties that bind body musicians are about more than psychic connections, streaming video, and stomping choruses. Many body musicians first fall in love with their instrument through childlike play, in lighthearted contexts. Barbatuques’ Barba first discovered that his body was “a toy with sound” as a teenager: “When I walked, I daydreamed, imagining melodies and putting rhythm to my steps. Without noticing, the hands followed, looking for a drumming sound, mixing sounds on my chest, hands, and snapping. It was a new game,” Barba recalls. In the same spirit, Terry’s body music was influenced by his work as the co-founder and drummer for the Jazz Tap Ensemble and sound effects guy for the Pickle Family Circus.

Musical exchange, the Festival’s bread and butter, helps unlock a whole range of human perspectives that Terry feels are often overlooked. “Rhythm and body movement across cultures reveal not only a sonic diversity but a breadth of world views, allowing us all to break out of our everyday perspectives, to understand each other at a more meaningful level,” says Terry. “If I listen carefully and find your timing, your rhythm, it accelerates our relationship. When you walk in step with someone, you breathe together. And the conversation can go much deeper.”

The language of body music varies from culture to culture, but the core impulse is rooted in a deep artistic expression through the human body. Moroccans have their own way of clapping, producing pops with fingers spread. Sumatrans slap their bellies just so, in a way unheard elsewhere. In the crevices and curves of human existence, in the resonating chambers of the human body and soul, discoveries are made and brought to aural and visual awareness for audiences and celebrants worldwide.

In Balinese kecak, the interlocking monkey chant associated with the epic Ramayana (and as popularized in the film Baraka), a large ensemble of vocalists resounds with the same rhythmic complexity heard on the gamelan. Body Tjak, a collaborative project Terry has been co-directing for twenty years, weaves body music and kecak into a seamless blend of movement and sound. The Kecak Project, the joint effort of extraordinary young Balinese composer Dewa Putu Barata and two Oakland-based gamelan ensembles, Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Gamelan X, will create a new kecak piece specifically for the Festival.

A very different conversation unfolds in the work of Turkish body musicians KeKeÇa. The duo, with backgrounds in theater and folk music, transform Turkish traditional songs into gentle pieces for the body with a flowing subtlety—an elegant departure from the athletic prowess sometimes associated with body music.

In a more traditional tête-à-tête, Celina Kalluk and partner sing Inuit vocal games from Canada’s arctic territory of Nunavut. To play, two partners sing into each other’s mouths, only a few inches apart, and interweave breath and voice until one of them gets tripped up or hyperventilates. The sound simultaneously evokes ancient history and futuristic sonics of electronic music. Terry recalls the first time he heard Inuit throat games live, “Every tune would end in laughter, because of the hyperventilation. The audience would anticipate the end, and then the entire room would break into laughter. It was contagious. It’s such a playful form.”

One local tradition highlighted at the festival and stretching far into the African-American past is hambone, which uses high-speed slaps to the thighs and chest as its musical palette. Perfected on the plantation when drums were prohibited, and later performed in vaudeville, hambone hit the airwaves and the white mainstream in the 1950s, with the Hambone Kids’ hit “Hambone Hambone.” Sam McGrier is one of those original Hambone Kids, and one of the few older artists still performing. Sam has been invited to perform with Derique McGee, whose youthful fascination with hambone has helped to keep this lightning-fast African-American tradition alive and clapping. Derique is an accomplished clown, proving that the serious art of Body Music can be hilariously joyful. Festival goers will have the unprecedented privilege of seeing these two hambone greats of different generations performing together.

On the experimental side, Montreal-based percussive dancer Sandy Silva blends the hard-hitting passion of Celtic step-dancing and flamenco with modern dance techniques, for a solo performance that blurs the boundary between body percussion and movement. Her musical versatility has taken her from jazz festival stages playing with Bobby McFerrin to “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Beyond the compelling history, musical variety, and physical artistry of body music, “It’s really about being human. It’s a very visceral connection with all these different people. We’re all playing our bodies,” Terry reflects. “I’m excited about all these styles going on around the world, and I’d like more people to see them and enjoy them. It’s a reminder of our humanity on a very basic level.”